Chapter 6: "When Reality Is a Nightmare: All the News That's Fit to
Terrify"
documents how often children are traumatized by shocking, violent television
news stories.
This chapter is especially timely in light of the recent media focus
on terrorist attacks,
impending war, sniper attacks, etc.
V-Chips have become standard equipment in most
TV sets.
Chapter 10: "Ratings Roulette: The Perils of Parental Guidance" is
the first to
make the new TV ratings understandable to a general audience, and the
book
explains the benefits and limits of the V-chip and other technologies
for
keeping unwanted programs from being shown on your TV. National
surveys show that parents are highly interested in making
use of TV ratings and the V-chip, but they have a woeful lack of
understanding of what the ratings mean and how they work.
Children's fright reactions are surprisingly intenseand
produce an
alarming array of side effects, including nightmares, stomach troubles,
aversions to common animals such as dogs, cats, and insects, and refusal
to
engage in common activities such as swimming. Throughout the book,
there
are vivid examples of how disruptive and long-lasting the effects of
television can be--examples that are all the more compelling because
they are
described in a child's or a parent's own words. For preschoolers, even
something as short as a movie promo can cause nightmares.